How To Start A Print On Demand Business In 2024 [Step By Step]

Last Updated on April 1, 2024 by John Cirelly

If you’re wondering how to start print on demand business, you’re in the right place.

This print on demand guide will show you the exact steps you need to take to start a print on demand (POD) business from complete scratch. This has been a lucrative part time side hustle for me, and I’d love to share the knowledge 100% for free.

No BS, no fluff.

These are the exact same strategies found in all those $997 courses.

This is a very detailed guide, so feel free to use the table of contents below to help you navigate. Also be sure to download our free print on demand launch checklist so you can pickup right where you leave off.

Alright, let’s do this thing!

Print On Demand Business Overview

Before we get into how to start a print on demand business, I want to quickly go over who this business model is for, and the two main strategies you can use to get started with your POD business.

Print On Demand is a unique way that anyone can use to get started making income online. Yes, you will have to commit time to get it up and running but once it’s going it can provide a truly passive form of income.

What I love about print on demand is that anyone can do this, even if you have little to no money to invest.

Unlike Amazon FBA you don’t need large amounts of startup cash to get the ball rolling. You also don’t have to stress over fulfillment, item returns, or customer support. Starting a print on demand business has plenty benefits such as…

• Completely scalable.
• Little to no startup costs.
• Don’t have to create a product.
• Don’t have to sell anyone a service.
• You can outsource much of the design work.
• Don’t have to deal with customers, refunds, or support.

If you’re looking for an extra side income, and a creative outlet, print on demand is an excellent business model for you.

Now there are a ton of different tools, platforms, and methods to start a print on demand business which can make the entire thing confusing. I’ve broken down two simple methods you can use to get started today.

Each method will work, but will have its own pros and cons. You’ll want to pick the one that makes the most sense to you.

Marketplace Method – This will cost you little to no money to get started. You’ll be using free third party marketplaces to place your products. You’ll also be using free methods of traffic to promote it. The main downside is that it’s slower to see results, and more difficult to scale.

Pros

• Doesn’t require building a website or storefront.
• Doesn’t require paid ads for traffic.
• Virtually anyone can use this method to start.
• Best option for beginners.

Cons

• It can be slow to build momentum.
• You’ll be designing and marketing yourself.
• Relies on marketplaces you have little control over.
• Running paid ad traffic is not recommended.
• Misses opportunities for email capture, upsells, and remarketing.

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Niche Store Method – This is one of the fastest ways to get a print on demand store off the ground. Using Shopify combined with a company like Printful positions you for quick growth and scalability. This is the fastest, yet most costly method.

Pros

• The fastest way to get started.
• Puts you in a great position to scale.
• Positions you to move quickly.
• Positions you better for branding.
• Allows for better long term SEO opportunities.
• More control over sales, upsells, and remarketing.
• Best option for more experienced marketers and designers.

Cons

• You have to pay for either domain hosting, or a storefront like Shopify.
• Integrations like Printful charge your account for the order, then reimburse you.
• If you stop paying for Shopify or your hosting you lose your storefront.
• Getting the right traffic to your store is critical

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If you’re completely new, or just can’t make up your mind, follow the Marketplace Method.

Finding Successful Print On Demand Niches

No matter what method you choose, you’re going to need to do some research on the types of designs you’ll be making. Ideally, we’ll find niches with lower competition but high sales volume. I’ll touch on this in more detail in a bit.

Here are a few traits you want your niche to have. You don’t need them all, but the more of these your niche has, the easier it will be to sell them products.

• They are passionate about this topic. (Think sports, pop culture, politics.)

• They have their own language. (Words and phrases used inside the hobby or niche.)

• Its not over saturated. (cute dogs, yoga moms, cats.)

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Here are a few niche examples to help get your creative juices flowing:

• Bird moms
• Sports photographers
• Special education teachers
• Female bowlers
• Bearded dragon owners
• Zookeepers
• Cat lovers in Florida.

By combining two large groups you narrow down the audience which makes it a lot easier to sell designs. We want people to see a design and think “Oh my gosh, it’s like this shirt was made for me!”

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Our main source of research and competitor analysis is going to take place on Amazon, even if you don’t plan to sell on Amazon.

Here’s why.

Merch By Amazon (MBA) is the largest print on demand platform on the internet, and Amazon gives us insights into their sales, niches and trending designs.

Amazon even assigns every product a Best Seller Rank (BSR), which is a number you can use to gauge how many people are buying that item.

The lower the BSR, the more sales that item has made.

You can think of BSR as checking the pulse of that design at that very moment. BSR can change weekly, or even by the hour.

We’ll use this information to give us the advantage, and validate our ideas.

We want to find what people are already searching for on Amazon, and create a great design that ranks for that keyword.

Lets go over the research steps I use to find winning print on demand niches.

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Follow these steps below to find keyword opportunities.

• Download the DS Amazon Quick View Chrome Extension. This will allow you to quickly view the BSR of Amazon products. This is free.

• Navigate to Merch Informers Research Tool in a separate tab.

• Type your keyword into the research tool, and pick your article of clothing. (Example: ninja cat)

• In the top left you’ll see the number of results per page. We’re aiming for under 500.

• Next, we’ll look at the BSR numbers. Ideally we want results towards the top to have a BSR of around 225,000, and medium range BSRs 1,000,000 or lower.

• Remember, the lower the BSR, the more sales that item is receiving.

• The goal here is to find a balance between popularity in sales, and low competition.

Example Of A Bad Keyword

Another Example Of A Bad Keyword

As you’re researching, you may also see inside of DS Amazon Quick View shirts listed as ‘Rank not found’. This simply means the product has not received any sales, and is usually a good example of designs and niches to stay away from.

Now that you know how to find print on demand niche ideas, spend some time and find a few phrases you think you could rank for.

After you found a keyword that looks good, we’ll take a look at what makes a great design.

Print On Demand Design Research

When wondering how to create a print on demand businesses, many people get stuck at the design phase.

“I can’t draw for sh*t.”

“I don’t have money for a designer!”

Don’t worry, me either. 😂

Below we’re going to cover some basic best practices you’ll want to keep in mind for you new print on demand business.

We’ll also go over exactly how you can create simple designs that sell.

(Yes, it’s proven that stupid simple designs out sell complex ones!)

As well as touch on the rules of the road so you don’t get your account banned.

Lastly we’ll go over exactly where you can get quality design work done, that won’t break the bank.

There are a few keys rules you’re going to have to follow if you want to keep your accounts open, online, and out of the courtroom. Please don’t skip this. It only takes a few mistakes to get booted off of some platforms.

Most of this isn’t hard to learn and resolves around not stealing designs, and following the marketplace’s rules. There are two general rules you should follow.

1. If you didn’t design it, you can’t copy it exactly.
2. If you’re unsure of a phrase, check it’s trademark status first.

Now you might be thinking…

And you’d be right.

So be sure to also do your own due dilligance while following this guide.

How To Check Trademark Status In The USA

• Visit the USPTO website. Click ‘search our trademark database.’

• Choose Basic Word Mark Search.

• Enter the phrase you want to use and click search.

• If you got no results, you’re in the clear. If you got results LIVE, we have to check to see if it covers clothing.

• Click the record and look to see what the trademark covers.

• In the example above, the trademark covers pretty much all clothing. We cannot use the phrase “I pity the fool.” But we can use a different variation.

• A quick Amazon search also shows almost no one using the phrase ‘I pity the fool.’ That’s another red flag.

• Multiple LIVE listings means multiple people are trying to claim rights to the phrase.

• Since there are so many people fighting over this phrase, it could be years until a decision is made. In theory you could use ‘black lives matter’ on a t-shirt, but just know one court decision could have your design taken down.

If you live in the UK, or are selling in the UK you can search the Intellectual Property Office and follow similar steps.

Best Design Practices

So you have your idea and have checked to ensure it’s not copyright protected. Now let’s get into creating the actual design.

Below are some best practices for print on demand products. These best practices carry over across all marketplaces, so keep these in mind when creating your design.

• Black and grey shirts sell the most.
• Design your logo in a space that is 4500 x 5400 pixels.
• Avoid using transparency.
• Keep your color choices under five options.
• Use Vexels for quality print designs to stand out.
• Bold font sells more than smaller font.
• Fill the entire print area with your design.
• Use contrast and complimentary colors.
• Export your image as a PNG in RBG colorspace at 300dpi.
• Use lifestyle photos with PlaceIt to increase sales.
• Save and organize two copies for you image. One for dark, one for light.

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Creating Designs Yourself

If you’re just getting started with your print on demand business I’d highly recommend going through the process of creating your own design at least a few times.

In print on demand, having a speedy workflow is the name of game. It allows you to jump on opportunities quickly and grow your portfolio of designs.

In order to do this, I’m going to recommend four tools you can use. Two of these tools are paid, but make creating designs so much easier.

Print On Demand Design Tools

Vexels – This place has the best print on demand ready designs. If you’re struggling to find designs you truly love, Vexels has you covered. Their entire business model is focused around making print on demand designs that actually sell.

PlaceIt – This tool is $14.95 per month and provides thousands of commercial use designs, logos and fonts. It also allows you to place your designs on a realistic mock up. So no need to buy a sample and take pictures of it yourself. When it comes to speed and workflow efficiency for print on demand, PlaceIt is my favorite.

Canva – There is a free version of Canva however it does not allow us to export PNG files at the 4500 x 5400 size we need. The pro version is $9.95 and gives you many different fonts and images you can use for your shirts.

Photopea – Photopea is literally a free browser based version of Photoshop. If you’re a designer or are comfortable using Photoshop you’ll love Photopea. Keep in mind you will need to import your own graphics or create your own.

Super Simple Text Designs

Believe it or not, some of the highest selling shirts are just plain white witty text.

For this example we’re going to be using a free browser based tool called Photopea.

Since Photopea is a near exact replica of Photoshop, this will also work in that program as well.

• Go to Photopea.com and create a new 4500 x 5400 project.

• Right click on your background layer, and choose Blending Options. Make the background black. This is so we can see our text better.

• Select the Text tool in the left toolbar and drag a box towards the top of the design. Change your font to something large like 700 and change the color to white.

• Type your phrase into the text box. You can change and resize the font by highlighting it and going up to the fonts section.

• Once you have the design you want, deselect the background layer, then go to File, Export As, PNG. Your export should look something like this.

• Now right click on your text layer and go to Blending Options. Select Color Overlay and make it black. Export this as another PNG. Now you have two designs for both black and white items.

Now you have two designs that you can save and upload into Merch By Amazon, Redbubble, or any other online platform. This is one of the fastest free ways to get produce text based designs.

Let’s see what this process would look like in a paid tool like Canva.

Designing With Canva

We’re going to go through the design process again, this time using Canva. While Canva is free, you’ll need the Pro version in order to export PNG files large enough to fit on merch. You’ll also find millions of POD ready images you can use with Canva Pro.

Canva is super easy to use, especially if you compare it to Photopea or Photoshop.

• Go to Canva.com and create a new project with a custom size of 4500 x 5400.

• You can use the templates on left as a starting point. Or select the text from the tool bar to get started. Once you have your text, see if you can find an image to compliment your design.

• Lastly when you have your design the way you want it, click Download in the top right. Save it as a PNG at 4500 x 5400 px with transparent background selected.

That’s it, you’re good to go. Also don’t forget to save two versions for dark and light background clothing.

Designing With PlaceIt

The last tool we’ll look at is called PlaceIt. This tool not only gives you tons of templates and designs to modify, but also makes placing your design on models super easy.

When you put your design on a model, its called a mock up. Statistically, lifestyle photos sell more products, so if you’re choosing to follow the Niche Store Method you can use these mock ups to help drive sales to your brand.

If you’re just following the Marketplace Method you can still benefit from all the pre-made designs.

• Go to PlaceIt.net and create an account.

• If you want to put your graphic on a mock up, click Mockups and then select the item of clothing you want it put on.

• Choose your design, crop it, and hit upload. You’ll have the option to add additional text and designs to it as well.

• If you’re a PlaceIt subscriber you can then download the images without the watermark and use them in your store.

• If you’re looking for designs, click on Designs at the top of the site and then choose T-Shirts.

• From here you can swap out fonts, text, and design elements through a simple drag and drop interface. Hit Download and save as a PNG when you’re done!

Using any of these three platforms you can get started and create eye catching designs that get sales.

But what if you don’t want to do any of the work yourself? Or maybe you have an awesome idea in your head, but can’t put it to paper?

Not a problem. Lets check out some of the best ways you can outsource print on demand design work.

Outsourcing Print On Demand Designs

There may be a time where you want a customize a design in a way that is above your skill level, that’s where third party services come to the rescue.

Here are some of the best ways to outsource your print on demand design tasks for your business.

Vexels

You can think of Vexels as a team of artists you can hire each month, for a ridiculously low price. What makes Vexels unique is not only do they have over 70,000 designs, but you get to request your own custom designs as well.

With the $29 a month plan you can request two custom designs, and download 200 pre-made designs per month. That’s uhhh…

Currently Vexels is offering 35% off their annual plan for readers of this guide!

On top of that you’ll be able to also produce lifestyle mock-ups on models, as well as design t-shirts right in the Vexels dashboard. Their designs are my personal favorite and have helped me stand out in more competitive markets.

On top of thousands of designs the platform also has a lifestyle mockup generator, a T-shirt maker, and something new called a ‘Scalable PSD Designs.’

These are designs in PSD format that already have tons of effect color layers that can be changed in Photoshop with just a few clicks. This is a game changer for people who aren’t great with Photoshop, but still need to create different variants to their design.

Check out the short video below to see how it works.

Eveyr feature in Vexels is made with print on demand in mind, meaning they use real graphic designers who know exactly what types of styles and trends are selling.

The platform also keeps up on holidays and events, meaning you can be the first to have winning designs for yearly holidays and new fads.

They are truly one of the best kept secrets in the print on demand space. Below are a few examples of their Print Ready designs.

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Fiverr

You’ve probably heard of Fiverr before, but did you know there are dedicated design artists who work specifically for print on demand businesses?

These sellers typically charge between five and ten dollars a design, which is much more affordable than hiring a graphic designer through platforms.

The great thing about these Fiverr sellers is that they understand the print on demand business. That means they deliver you the source files, as well as the design in the proper PNG format and size for MBA.

It can be tough to sort through styles and go through their ratings, so I picked my top three Fiverr POD designers out for you below.

VallantGraphic

Rahima09

Jishankhan46

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If you’re new, that was a lot to take in. And if you started reading from the top, congrats on making it this far.

In these next two sections I’ll be breaking down each print on demand business method, and explaining exactly how to execute each one.

The Marketplace Method

In the Marketplace Method we’re going to be creating our print on demand business through third party marketplaces that already exist.

This means we’ll be creating designs and uploading them to different sites. These sites include but are not limited to: Merch By Amazon, Teespring, Redbubble, and Etsy. Now this can all be done manually, however there are a few tools we can use to make pushing out our designs to these platforms a quick process.

This method does not require you to pay for Shopify, build a website, or run any type of paid ads. We’ll be optimizing our presence on each platform to get the most amount of free traffic possible.

Since the three most popular POD sites are MBA, Redbubble, and Teespring, that is where our focus will be in this guide.

Merch By Amazon

Merch By Amazon is the first marketplace we’ll want to tackle. The strategy here is to get some quick wins with MBA, because that will get you out of Tier 10, which represents the 10 upload slots you are first limited to.

With MBA, the more sales you make, the more upload slots you have for designs. If you do this right, this can create a bit of a snowball effect and give you more room to test different designs and niches.

First we’ll want apply for a MBA account. You have to apply for an invitation, but if you already use Amazon services and live in either the US or UK, your chances of getting approved are high.

Here’s some of the information you’ll need when filling out your application:

• Country
• Address
• Business name (optional)
• Email address
• Payment/Banking details
• Tax information
• Phone number

Fill out this information honestly and as accurately as you can. If you’re a US citizen, avoid the tax withholding option, you do not need this.

To increase your odds of being accepted into Merch By Amazon you can add a link to your own domain. This shows Amazon you’ve gone the extra mile and will likely use the MBA service.

In the additional details box feel free to put other helpful information that would help you get approved. If you’re a designer, hold a trademark, or already have other storefront, be sure to include them!

It could take up to 60 days to get approved, so be patient and feel free to get started on other platforms in the meantime. Its important to note that if you’re rejected, there is no re-application process so take your time with this!

Once you’re approved I highly recommend downloading the Pretty Merch plugin for Chrome. It’s free, and transforms your MBA dashboard into something that’s well, pretty! But seriously, this helps a lot once you’ve got some products out there.

Alternatively the pro version of Pretty Merch is just $8 bucks a month, and allows you to quickly sort your listings to identify winning designs, and track your overall royalties at a glance.

v.s

Next, you’ll want to take your designs and prepare them for upload. Navigate to the Create tab in your dashboard and choose the Standard T-Shirt design. Since you can only submit one design per day in Tier 10, we’ll stick with the easiest product to sell, the standard t-shirt.

Once selected, you’ll have have a few options. Pick no more than five colors, and set your price to $13.99. Yes, this is low, however the early game is to get out of Tier 10 as fast as possible, you can bump these numbers up later.

Next we’ll need to write a brief product description and label the design under a brand. We’re going to want to NATURALLY sprinkle in our keyword. Amazon is smart, so there is no need to repeat your keyword a million times.

After you submit your design, it’s in Amazon’s hands for review. This can take anywhere for 24 hours, to a week. As your store becomes more established I’ve noticed the review process takes less time. Be patient, and move on to the next marketplaces while you wait.

Redbubble

The second marketplace we’ll tackle is Redbubble, which doesn’t require any application process or waiting period. Create a new account, and choose the Artist option.

The process is pretty straight forward. You can set your payout options under your account settings and choose from either PayPal, or ACH bank transfer.

Next, we’ll want to add a new design. Click your profile picture in the top right, then choose Sell Your Art. Click Add Designs and then Upload New Work. We can use the exact same 4500×5400 design, no need to resize!

We’ll need to give the design a title, description, and some tags. We’ll again want to naturally include our keywords along with some related terms. For example, my keyword in this example is urbex, which is short for urban exploration, which I also included.

If you think your design would be popular in other languages you can repeat the process using Google Translate. I personally do not do this.

Below you’ll see options for different products. Now you may not want your design on say a dress or pillow. Here you can disable the items you don’t want the design applied to. You can also hit Edit and change how the design is applied to each product to size it a bit better.

Scroll down and you can confirm your product settings. After about a minute your design will be upload, but take up to 15 minutes to actually show up. The cool thing with Redbubble is you can create unlimited shops to organize your designs.

So if you have a bunch of wrestling and taco designs, you can create separate store fronts to help create distinct brands. These brands help customers find that they’re looking for, improve conversion, and keep everything clean.

Teespring

Last but not least we’ll want to get our designs up on Teespring. Creating an account easy, and linking your Paypal email to get paid is as simple as putting in your Paypal email address.

The strategy with Teespring is to also get a few sales under your belt as quickly as possible. This helps establish trust with Teespring and gets your products promoted around their site for free.

Since Teespring makes money from your designs too, its in their best interest to promote great designs. While Teespring might be a bit crowded, their algorithm that promotes successful designs can be extremely powerful when you know how to position yourself for success.

Once your account has been created, go over to Settings and make sure these checkboxes are checked. These ensure that Teespring can promote your products as they become eligible.

Next scroll down a bit and connect your Paypal or Payoneer account so you can get paid. Once you’re done click on Listings and then click on Start Designing.

Here we can select a product to put our design on. Teespring has a TON of options but for right now we’re going to stick with a simple Classic Tee. When asked, go ahead and choose the Sell option for what you want to do with your product.

Select your design, choose no more than five colors, and set your price margin a bit lower than what most creators price similar products. Doing this will help drive early sales, and signal to Teespring that your account is legit, and that your designs are something people want to buy.

Once again for the product description and title we have naturally incorporated our keywords to help give Teespring some context about this product. You can even put your keyword in the URL if it makes sense to do so.

Just like Redbubble, you can arrange your listings into separate shops as their own brands, which I would highly recommend. Repeat this process with each new design, an you’ll be gaining traction in no time.

Alternative Traffic Sources

While using these three marketplaces you might want to increase your sales by driving more traffic. This is great specifically for MBA and Teespring where you can use additional sales early to rank up in tiers, and gain trust with the algorithm.

I do not recommend paid ads for a few reasons. First off, these marketplaces give you very little control, meaning you cannot capture visitors emails, or use Facebook Pixel tracking.

Second, in these marketplaces you share space with your competitors. We do not want to pay for traffic to get lost on the site, or purchase someone else’s design. While you can go this route, I would advise against it.

Let’s look at some methods I would suggest.

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Facebook Groups are a great place to foster a community for free around a specific topic or niche. As the owner of the group you can eventually start promoting your relevant merch to your members as the number grows. Your members will also signal what topics are important to them, which can help influence your future designs.

Instagram Pages are another great source of highly relevant free traffic. I don’t personally like Instagram as much as Facebook Groups due to the link restrictions, but you still can’t beat it. By posting niche related content along with promoting your store you can use hashtags to drive clicks to your store, and snag some early sales. For Instagram its best to promote either Teespring or Merch By Amazon.

Pintrest Pins can also help boost traffic, especially for designs that are eye catching. By creating a pin with your product that matches a Pintrest keyword search, you can find potential buyers for your shirt, and get additional clicks. Whoop whoop!

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The beauty of the Marketplace Method is that you don’t have to constantly worry about marketing, we’re using platforms that do the marketing for you! This gives you time to focus on finding better keywords, and creating even more designs.

The Niche Store Method

In the Niche Store Method, we’ll focus on building our own storefront that is dedicated to a specific niche or group, and use Facebook Ads to drive traffic to the store.

This involves more up front costs than the Marketplace Method, but gives you way more marketing opportunities and control over your over your traffic.

This section assumes you followed the beginning of the guide and already know how to perform keyword research, as well as create a design.

Building Your Print On Demand Storefront

Put down the hammer! We’re not “technically” building a storefront. We’re going to host the store on Shopify, which is one one the quickest, easiest, and most convenient ways to create your own store.

Then we’ll link it with your fulfillment partner Printful so they can handle the actual order. These tools enable you to start your print on demand business very quickly, so we’ll need accounts for both platforms.

• Sign up for a 14-day free trial of Shopify. This lets you get started right away and sometimes even making a sale in the trial period. After the trial is over, Shopify Basic is $29 per month.

• Now create a Printful account and confirm your email.

• Head on over to Shopify and add the Printful app to your Shopify account. Now login to your Printful account.

💥 BOOM. That’s it. 💥

Creating Your Products

At this point, you should have some designs already saved to your computer. If not, head back up to the design section of this guide and get to work. 😊

You can access your Printful designs from their the website, or from the app that’s integrated into your Shopify store.

Choose Create Template and then pick a product you want to add your design to. Simply drag and drop your design and it should get added right away.

You can choose your colors, and even opt to add additional designs to the back, or the sleeves (this increases your costs and is not recommended but it looks cool so you do you).

You can quickly duplicate your products, which is great if you plan on making a few different variants of the same design.

Running Facebook Ads

Paid advertising. This section could literally be a course in and of itself. If you’re following this method I’m going to assume you have some experience working inside the Facebook ad platform.

I’m going to keep these advertising techniques focused around strategies that will grow your print on demand business, and avoid the basics of running ads on Facebook.

If you get lost, or think you’re in over your head with FB ads, please do ONE of these two things.

• Cancel your Shopify subscription and follow the Marketplace Method instead.
  
  Or…

• Check out Facebook’s free marketing resources and come back when you feel ready.

Now lets get into the good stuff!

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Its no surprise that we’re going to want to target the specific interests that reflect your niche. For instance, if your designs are centered around racing, you’ll want to target groups that reflect that interest, so either Racing or maybe NASCAR.

The name of the game is specificity, not necessarily how large your target audience is. We want our ads to feel like their laser targeted.

Think about your design, does it appeal more towards women? Are these women younger, or older? Adjust your targeting accordingly.

When you create an ad, Facebook will want to know what to optimize for. I like to test first with an engagement campaign, and then move to conversions if the data supports that. This helps validate your target audience, creative, and copy.

• Engagement – Cheaper traffic. Great for testing audiences and ideas. You can use as little as $1 to $5 to test new ideas. Measure the unique link clicks, CTR, CPE, and move to a conversion campaign if you see at least 20-25% engagement.

• Conversion – More expensive traffic. Higher conversions. Better to use this when you have a tried and true ad set and audience.

The trick with testing Engagement audiences is knowing how to understand the metrics. You can usually get enough data back with $5-$10 spent.

Its important to remember you’re not looking for sales on your Engagement campaign, traffic generated to the site and actions on the ad is the biggest indicator that you have what that audience wants.

Once you have a winner move, that same ad over to a Conversion campaign and turn it on. You should start to see better engagements and sales with a slightly higher cost on ads. Try to keep cost per click under $2, this is usually a safe number for POD shirts, but will vary depending on your product.

If traffic remains consistent and profitable, slowly increase your ad budget. From here you can begin experimenting with different ad placements across the Facebook Ad Network. Try and wait until you have 1-10 conversions on a ad before testing different placements.

Automating Your Print On Demand Business

The secret to scaling your print on demand business lies in one word. Automation.

Automation tools allow you to essentially “clone” yourself, and upload hundreds of design varieties to dozens of different marketplaces all in just a few minutes.

These tools do cost money, but it’s nowhere as expensive as hiring a virtual assistant or employee to do these tasks for you. Some print on demand businesses scale to the point where they hire people to use these automation tools to speed up the workflow.

Let’s take a look at a few of the best print on demand automation tools.

1. FlyingUpload – This tool is my favorite. It allows for unlimited automated uploads to over a dozen marketplaces, features a keyword research tool, and product tag generator. Has a FREE version with paid plans starting at $8.66 USD per month.
2. Merch Informer – Allows you to place designs on 200 different products across 30 different marketplaces from a single dashboard. Also features automatic trademark protection, keyword research tool, and built-in designer. Starts at $9.99 per month.
3. PODConnect – Features automated uploads to 30 different marketplaces across 400 different products with auto trademark checking. Starts at $9.99 per month.
4. Merch Titan – Allows for scaling to multiple markets and products through bulk CSV imports. Features keyword and SEO analyzers with trademark detection. Starting at $9.99 per month.

It’s important to not get overwhelmed by too many shiny objects or tools. I’d suggest picking one of the tools above to test at first. You’ll also want to fully grasp the entire print on demand process in order to ensure you’re getting the most out of your automation.

I’ll update this section with a link reviewing each print on demand automation tool in the future.

Closing Advice

If you’ve made it to the end, then you’ve got grit, and I have a secret for you.

The print on demand space is filled with half-assed designs, mediocre descriptions, and abandoned store fronts. The market is filled with dead designs from people that were chasing a quick lambo lifestyle. If there’s one thing that will get you to the finish line, it’s consistency.

By continuously improving your craft, educating yourself, and staying the course, you can create a very serious stream of passive of income. I say passive because after you put in the hours, you’ll literally wake up to new sales, and money in your pocket.

Now go make awesome shit.

Mentioned Tools

There’s a lot going on this article. Below is a shortlist of some of the mentioned tools that are helpful for starting a print on demand business.

Print On Demand Design Tools

• Vexels – 70,000+ high quality unique designs offered as a service.
• Canva – For quick designs, images, and mockups.
• PlaceIt – Tons of lifestyle mockups and design templates.
• Photopea – Basically a free web version of Photoshop.
• Fiverr – Best place to find budget friendly designers.
• Printful – The best place to handle fulfillment for your print on demand business.

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Print On Demand Research Tools

• PrettyMerch – Makes tracking BSRs and sales on Amazon easy and sexy.
• DS Amazon Quickview – Free Chrome plugin that shows BSRs in Amazon.
• FlyingUpload – Includes keyword research, SEO, and competitive analysis.
• Merch Informer – Features keyword research and competitive analysis.

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Print On Demand Automation Tools

• FlyingUpload – Free version. Has great mix of research and automation tools.
• Merch Informer – Automation across 30 markets on 200+ products.
• PODConnect – Automation across 30 markets on 400+ products.
• Merch Titan – Supports bulk CSV uploads to many marketplaces.

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Misc Tools

• Shopify – One of the simplest and fastest ways to get a print on demand store up.
• Weebly – A free alternative to Shopify that is perfect for beginners.

Frequently Asked Questions